An international summit on the military use of artificial intelligence is being held today at the World Forum in The Hague. REAIM 2023 is attended by governments, academics and others involved in the development and application of AI.
According to Marijn Hoijtink, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Antwerp, the main discussions are “responsible use of military AI”, i.e. responsible use of military AI. “The idea is that the Netherlands wants to provide a platform to think about best practices, new forms of regulation and the application of artificial intelligence in the military sector,” she says.
Hoijtink also says that this cannot be seen in isolation from international discussions on the regulation of autonomous weapon systems, which have been going on for years. It seems they have reached a dead end, so by organizing the summit, the Netherlands is trying to take a new direction in thinking about the broad application of artificial intelligence in the military domain.
Smart weapons
Although the regulation has not yet been defined, the so-called “smart weapons” are being developed on the sly. For example, facial recognition is already being used on the battlefield, Hoijtink knows. “It’s not used for attacks, but for example to identify Russian soldiers,” he says. “Even the Armed Forces of Ukraine are using it as part of the information war with Russia.”
According to Hoijtink, there are also all kinds of examples of American experiments where Google’s algorithms and expertise are being used to make decisions about what or who can be automatically attacked. “But in most cases, there’s a human part in the barrel.”
Hoijtink points out that the Netherlands is not in favor of fully autonomous weapons, but that the Netherlands is certainly in favor of investing in partially autonomous weapons. “The danger is that if we get to a certain practice or a certain form of regulation, it will legitimize further investment in partially autonomous weapons.”
Source: BNR
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